Greedy Goblin

Monday, December 14, 2009

Ungeared for ICC

You might read my whining post, may not (lost nothing that case), but whining changes nothing. So here is the idea to kick some nerfed butt (and also some social butts claiming that "I'm just ungeared for doing X"):

You roll a new alt or transfer a non-raiding char to EU-Arathor, horde side (sorry Americans, I can't go there to play with you). You can roll a DK, but beware, we won't raid with 19 DKs! If you are planning to transfer but unsure if there would be enough players, roll an alt, see it yourself and transfer when the first raid is scheduled. Update: due to the huge interest, Koltas or some alt will mostly (RL > WoW) be available between 18:30 - 19:30. The official date when surely be available is 18:30-20:00 Saturday.

Update: there is no pre-screening, anyone can join. Of course not anyone can stay!

If you are lvl1 I give you 100G and some bags for start.

You level up. Going to low lvl dungeons with guildmates during the raidtime is encouraged.

If you are lvl 40 I give you a set of decent bags and 500G for riding and such

You level to 80 and make some gold by quests and gathering (not being gatherer during leveling and not being a well-supported alt = being dumb).

You spend the gold on blue gear on the AH and rep vendors

You show what rotation you figured out. Copy & paste EJ doesn't work, since they optimize for ilvl 250 gear and not 190.

If your rotation is not a joke, I enchant you up for free and give 2000G to roll some raiding professions. JC is encouraged as it gives trinkets.

I fill the bank with consumables

We go to Naxx25 and see who can stay out of the fire. Raid time: Saturday 19:00-22:00

If you are good and the raid needs a dual spec, I give you another 2000G for specialization and other gear set and enchant it for free

If after Naxx25 there are more than 25 capable players, we go to ToC25, Ony25, U25 then ICC25

If less than 25 capable players left, we do ToC10, Ony25, U10, ICC10

Rules:

The obvious: no epics, no exalted SoH enchant, no epic gems (except JC special gems), no Abyss-shard enchant. All blues, including HC drops are available of course.

No Vent: no one will tell you to stand out of the fire, you'll have to figure it out yourself. Of course you can make whisper macros like "/w Othertank Stack 4 reached, taunt

We'll raid only 3 hours a week (Saturday 19:00-22:00), no "no-life".

No raiding character: your toon must not done any serious raiding, I want to see 25 [Secrets of Ulduar] jumping up when Saron goes down. I'll also go as mage

No copy of your raiding toon: if you are raiding as a rogue, don't roll a new rogue. The internet is big, anonymous will be happy to comment that "JasonY's main is JasonX on Maghteridon and he's farming ICC 6 days a week". Roll something else, something you don't do serious raiding with.

Obviously I don't expect you to not raid anywhere else. The guild is a one-time project that may or may be not repeated in Cataclysm. So before you'd transfer a character you have big plans with, be warned that you might have to transfer it back after ICC is cleared.

I'd like to see what the "I'm just ungeared" idiots will say when a blue-geared bunch of class-inexperienced players with as-casual-as-can-be schedule clear the whole WotLK raiding content (on normal of course).

What do I want to prove? That the content is a joke. Still many people can't do it either because he is a moron or slacker, or more likely, he binds himself to M&S.

95 comments:

Wow, I wonder if this is even possible. I'm skeptical that you'll be able to pull the 5k dps needed for ICC in blues.

However, one thing about your challenge is that ICC is getting nerfed slowly everyday (due to the stacking buff).

Such projects are far more interesting than soloing low-level instances for sure.

I also wonder about your motivation:'I'd like to see what the "I'm just ungeared" idiots will say when a blue-geared bunch of class-inexperienced players with as-casual-as-can-be schedule clear the whole WotLK raiding content (on normal of course).'

I think everyone knows that skill > gear. I thought the motivation for doing something like this (and for those who join as well) would be for the challenge of it and not to prove some point.

I have a LVL 80 shammy Ench/LW that has not done any raiding as healer and only a time or two in naxx as ench. The only thing I am worried about in ICC is tank being one shoted. What about essence of gossamer? It is a (almost) a must for the tank, but is heroic AN drop blue. Can we use some blue HC pieces?

I'm interested to see how this works out. While I've no doubt it is possible to clear content with new characters, if you really expect to have someone roll a level 1 I'm curious as to how you'll manage the differences in player level and time availability amongst your recruits. Or how you'll manage a 3 hour a week raidtime with people who aren't on their mains but have invested 100+ hours to level. Or how you'll cope should, say, only 7 people hit level 80, or some slack off and give up, or some prove themselves incapable of getting out of the fire.

But like I say, I'm interested to see it - I don't think it's impossible, but it might take a lot more social engineering (goblin engineering?) than is outlined in this post.

And Will - realistically there's guilds starting up with these ideals all the time. The problem is they rarely manage to keep the M&S out, the people pulling their weight get fed up and leave to where their efforts will pay off, and the guild stagnates and dies.

@Azzur: back then I made a calculation with the spreadsheet of EJ for hunters: 4900DPS in blues and I'm unsure if I picked up the best blues since I know as much about hunter as much an "average player" knows his own class.

@Daniel: of course

@Flex: if not enough SKILLED player comes, that will be the result and I simply accept that not enough players were interested. Negative result is still result. I obviously won't waste my time boosting M&S

Some questions:Regarding the timezone: Since Arathor is a British server, is the Raid time also at British timezone or is 19:00-22:00 meant as CET?

Is there a timeline for this project? I used half a year for my last toon to level to 80. Although I know powerleveling techniques I don't see it realistic for me to be much faster than several month, so I would give it a try, but transfer one of my alts which I haven't really played for over a year now when I am not fast enough.

@gevlon a spreadsheet can only give u ur maximum dps on a fight like patchwerk, it has no grounding in the fights in icecrown.

Icecrown isnt like ulduar where it was just a little harder then naxx, ICC will eat your tanks up if there undergeared. U take tons of aoe damage that if ur healers cant keep up the dps die and while dps is faceroll, you wont have enough to beat an enrage timer.

10 man u could do the first 3 bosses maybe in blues, and thats a very strong maybe. But the thing is Icecrown Radiance reduces dodge by 20% and at the lvl of gear u have with blue ull most likely have 0 dodge. So you'll avoid a piddly amount of damage ur tanks effective health would be shit, Your healers wont be able to heal raid damage and tanks with out some dying ur dps wont be up to par to beat enrage timers. The fact is u havent put alot of thought into the fight mechanics and etc. You have to understand ICC is a "Gear check" and a "skill Check". If u can get some bosses down great all the power to you, but IMO your going to wipe and wipe and wipe and wipe and not get anything down.

As much as I'd like to see this happen, until they significantly nerf the content, this isn't possible.

And this is coming from experience, I cleared ICC-10 (the current wing) tonight with my guild. We had two dedicated hunters pulling DBS's blood beasts out, not a single player within 12y of the other players, and we STILL had to have every DPS pull over 5500 to manage it.

By the numbers, its simply impossible to do that kind of damage in current blues.

I'm a very big fan of the concept that skills make the player, gear does not... but there are limitations to that logic.

I would love to do this with you, just love to. But I work Saturday night at that time. A pity, but I think that this is a great idea and I will push it on my blog. One question: how much time do people have to level up? A wek, a few weeks?

Unfortunately, no amount of skill will allow a tank in blues to take more than 2 stacks of Gormok25's Impale, and bringing more than 2-3 tanks will certainly result in not enough dps before the worms come out too.

I have to agree with some other of the commenters. DPS may be OK, but the difference between a blue tank and a i245 tank is 20,000 hp and 30% avoidance at least, and no amount of skill can make up for that.

lol at thinking there going to nerf ICC as much as you think they are, Its not incredibly hard as it is now, and yet u expect them to make it easy enough to /faceroll with no hands and blindfolded while comatose on drugs. I'm not an incredibly geared person myself but there is a certain gear check, Its like u think that u can do any hardmodes in blues(some maybe). But the fact is there is a gear check and blizz has even admitted to there being one(GC FTL)

@Masapa: I can't give deadline, since I don't know how many transferers will come. However if you are "late" but skilled, you might join later raids. Due to the blue restrictions, we'll need creative choices between bosses like 6 tanks on one, 2 on the next, so the people will rotate a lot. There will be place for every SKILLED player.

Well I just healed h HoR in quest blues and greens on my resto druid, so I know it's possible to clear ilevel 232-equivalent content in blues. You'll have to have some very good theorycrafters for this though gev, and even then I doubt how possible this is; tanks getting 1-shot will be a big issue, and they won't ever dodge. Lord marrowgar you'll probably get through with his lack of enrage, but you'll need a LOT of skill to make up for the lost gear. Like, ensidia-level skill.Good luck to you though, I'll definitely be watching this.

Currently as of 13.12.09 this is impossible due to simple stats as tank's hp and healer's SP.

I have done it already 3 times: on resto druid, dk tank and holy/disc priest (all totc 10/25 geared). The strategy on 1st boss (Lord Marrowgar) is: 2 tanks eat cleave + normal dmg, 2 healers for each tank and 1 healer as reserve. Problem here is : our 55k tank(s) could easily die in 3 sec (died 2 times , lol). So healer has to be 100% focused on tank AND if tank-healer gets impaled a reserve healer needs to jump imidiately in his place. I know this is not an issue for top guilds , but if pug makes this mistake its an instant wipe.

So what this has to do with gear? Simple: if healer is geared in blues and/or Naxx10/HCs epics there is A BIG (>90%) chance that healer will not be capable of healing out the incoming dmg (as i said before top tanks die in 3 sec without good healing -> take 1-1,5 sec for casting and 0,5 sec as reaction speed and u have small 1 sec to heal the incoming dmg). And ofcourse there is 2nd phase when your raid MAY get massive dmg due to Bone Storm.

P.S. for all the trolls out there: this is at current 13.12.09; i had all addons needed (DBM,NECB,x-pearl...) 60 ms connection; we even had to use Vent to make sure healers dont mess up + THIS was done in PUG with top guilds on Twisting neither. But - hey , no fun without trolls ?!? -_-

Undergeared for bla bla bla or lacking achievement for bla bla bla proved incorrect as per the second post in the linked thread.

Sure, I spent my wow-gold on enchanting and gemming my blue slots with the best options available, but wow-gold is only a tool to be used for reaching a goal. My goal was to prove the whining incorrect within one week of dinging 80.

Aww. I would really love to see you ingame one day. But it won't happen in this project, unfortunately. I honestly doubt that you would have patience enough to wait for me as I slowly would climb the learning curve. And besides raiding a saturday night at watch-tv-with-the-family prime time is a no-no.

But I'll watch this experiment from the sideline and it will fun to see how far you can make it. Tobold questions your EQ, and yeah, maybe he's right, but the question is how much it matters for the outcome.

Anyway: I'll sip my drink in the corner and send you some cheers when you need it.

great!My main is lock and I've raided mostly pre-bc and a bit of new content with her. Though I've always wanted to try out a mage or - alternatively - paladin tank. Probably this could be an option and good motivation for me to do so :). How much time you are planning to give for leveling up?

Wow this sounds like a really interesting experiment. I look forward to reading updates about it. I'd love to participate but unfortunately can't commit on Saturdays but I'll make do by living vicariously =p

I have no doubt that this is possible, but I would think it requires exceptional players. Partly because it's going to be very difficult, but also because players will need to figure out a lot for themselves, do a lot of theorycrafting etc. However, if you gathered people from the absolute top guilds, then this should be doable.

I wonder though, how long would it take a casual player to level from 1 to 80? (i.e. is it possible for me to get to 80 "in time" to participate if I start a new char).

I'm a casual player myself and I have 3 level 80 (alliance side) healing/ranged dps characters (druid, priest, shaman). I guess I could try and roll a melee dps or tank, since I've never actually done that.

I'm slightly worried about choosing 'the right' class though. I assume you will want to have a certain raid composition eventually, but a paladin would probably be a good starting point? (since it also could be a healer). Also I dont know anything about horde classes, so I would need to read up on that aswell.

Apart from this blog post, is there some way to let people 'team up' and level together (for those starting a new char)?

On a side note, are there any good sites for the theory crafting part to get information from (that is not specific to epic items).

Very interesting plan. I won't join you, but will follow how fast this blue guild can clear each tier.I'll have special interest in which fights are difficult for you (I guess you will find that the gear-check bosses are much more difficult than any "strategy check"), and also in the strategies you'll work out.

I'm very tempted to start up a European WOW account just to do this. I've shown several of my guildlings the story about you guys doing Yogg-10 in blues when they pull the "I can't do X I don't have the gear" rubbish.

Well damn you Gevlon... I've been out off WoW for almost a year and now i'm actually considering giving this a try. I've been raiding as a mage until half of Ulduar10, but I do have a Warlock alt that's in her fifties, and plenty of free time between January and March 2010.I won't re-activate my account just now, but if I see you need more dots for Onyxia in January, I think I won't be able to resist.

Two questions:1. How long will sign ups last? I would like to join, but at this time I'm studying intensely and I will have time only after a month/month and a half. Will I still be able to join then with a level one character then?

2. What about people who works on shifts and will be able to attend only about every second Saturday?

@Paulinus: There is no attendance limit, there will be high rotations between players, according to strategies anyway. You can catch up later, yet if others already proved themselves, they will have better chance to get a spot.

@Anonymous: what weed? I hope you don't think herbalism a good raiding profession?! My GF think it is for tanks due to http://www.wowhead.com/?item=22795 is a shield and not a heal, but I'm still not convinced.

Awesome idea, the raiding challenge could be coupled with a gold making challenge as well, "goblins swarm to join Gevlon" Is gold making 'skills' correlated to pve 'skills'?,fascinated to find out how it all goes,

The furthest this guild is get is TOC 10. I'm calling it at that. ICC bosses nearly two shot tanks with 50k health. This means a tank in all blues (coming from my memory of my fresh level 80 prot pally when wotlk first hit) will be at around 20-25k health. They will basically get one shot. The healers have to bring the tank from almost dead to full. Even if your blue geared tank survives the first hit, the healers won't be able to bring them to full, and they will get two shot.

On a side note. Epic gear is by far easier to obtain then blue gear. I'm assuming the blue gear that you will be using is from heroics. Which lock out at once per day. So if your tank was going for essence of gossamer he could only get one roll at it per day. Or your tank could farm ToC5 regular with no lock out until the black heart drops. The same can be said about all the new ICC5 dungeons.

Why not limit the gear to ilvl 219(icc 5 regular gear). I think if you did that your chances of clearing up to ICC 10/25 would be a real possibility.

-- 1. -- GUIDE: i used one on WOW-PRO.COM(srry for this commercial but they have best "freeware" Guides out there). Choose for webpage one's(alt-tab or print it) because addon-version is maybe ingame available, but not "clear"(read:fast) enough.-- 2. -- ADDONS: cartographer (or any other for coords), x-pearl (UI), QUESTHELPER (to make corrections incase you cant figure out the exact position), castbar addons etc...-- 3. -- POTIONS + ELIXIRS: probably 2nd best value after a guide. Have always healing potions to make sure you can survive that 5 sec more to finish mob; and of course battle and guardian elixirs (flasks if you can efford it - keep in mind only (55)65-80 avail.)...-- 4. -- FOOD: mana/hp without a question , but +sta,spi,AP... is more then wellcomed help (how? 1) buy from AH and/or 2) lvl your cooking )-- 5. -- First Aid: A must for all mellee classes or even casters (same as pots). For example i used only bandgages (no food at all) while lvling my rogue 55-80

I'm actually really looking forward to this, and will be rolling my character (thinking a shammy) when I get in from work tonight :) it will be nice to play WoW with some added purpose and challenge that's been missing for a while.

-P.S: might not be a bad idea to pick up alchemy as well, for easy mana potions and a decent blue trinket. Are dragon's eyes allowed? i dont think you can buy the pattern for blue quality ones anymore. Might be better to get something else, if no epic dragon's eyes allowed.

You might want to make a rule explicitly allowing or denying assistance from other raiders. I main a mage, and assuming you've not played your mage in approximately forever, I could give you more than a few tips on how to significantly improve your dps (in the range of 300-500, since you'd be in all blues). Not sure if you want people to roll, say, a rogue, find someone who mains a rogue, and do approximately zero work figuring out their general rotation and their specific reactions to specific situations.

A forum is an ideal place to discuss rotations/strategies. You yourself said that we will need nonstandard strategies to pull this off and discussing it all ingame during raid time is probably suboptimal. Also the forum is a good way of gauging interest. A forum doesn't need to be a place for socials to post pictures of themselves.

Please clarify: is the idea for the blues guild still going ahead? I am up for the challenge if it is.

If not then I'm not really sure what you were trying to prove. A forum is as good as any way to communicate online and more persistent/centralised than comments on a blog. Regardless of how "social" a group of people working for a common goal are, there still needs to be communication and coordination. There are very few of my workmates that I would go out for drinks with and yet I email them all the time regarding work.

I'm not sure if the "Gevlon" we are dealing with here is the teh real one. He's acting very strangely, even for him. Actually he's even gone so far as to claim he is a clone on the forum. Either Gevlon has ben hacked or he is playing a very strange game at the moment.

Someone figured out how to create a blogger account. You can find he is not real by clicking on the name. Mine leads to this profile: http://www.blogger.com/profile/07072766785893313616 with "Greedy goblin" as blog. If you click on the blog, you get to the blog.

Re-rolls never work. You're going to get a ton of people starting up at first and by mid 30's-40's people will slowly fade and you will be left with 5-8 hardcore players and you will have to begin the process all over again.

The guild will succeed as long as they are able to beat content. If they cannot beat the content at a steadily rate, it will fall apart since people will deem the experiment and/or Gevlon a 'failure' and move on to their regular playstyles.

It's really a 'one trick pony' and will survive as long as the 'trick' works. So Gevlon has to build up the guild fast enough and then choose his raiding teams successfully.

I have criticized you in the past, but what I really liked was your Ulduar 10 in blues project. I will really like this project too.

It reminds me of when Ensidia was going for Naxx 25 world first in their BC level 70 epics.

http://ensidia.com/community/blogs/ensidia-starts-raiding-part-1.html

But I'm very skeptical you'll get much further than Uld 10. I think there must be some rule modification so you can successfully do ICC10 while still be undergeared. Like say only ivl 200 epics. A Tauren Warrior with BS / JC and ilvl 200 epics can get upwards 33k HP unbuffed if I remember correctly.

Wow, this looks so exciting. A pity I'm on US servers or I'd be there with you.

I love this kind of experimental stuff. Can't wait for the updates.

Even if later on it had to be modified to: Clear ICC in HC or Naxx epics, it would still be an interesting experiment.

Another exciting point is that as blue gear should be easy to get, everyone will be maxed for that level of gear, showing skill in playing, rather than there being any doubt put down to gear discrepancies.

I hope as you guys level you are going to do each relevant instance at the minimum level.

Would have been really fun to join, but "unfortunetly" I spend most saturdays with my friends/girlfriend :( I even have a few low level characters that I'm leveling on Arathor so would be perfect, but I will follow this and if you end up doing it on another day I will join.

"Naysayers: ICC will be after Naxx, ToC, Ulduar, Onyxia. It will be late January/February. By that time, ICC will be "adjusted to be accessible to all players"."

So you are saying the guild will *start* with only blues, but once you get to icecrown, you will be wearing what you gained in running the earlier raids or from badges?

Or are you assuming that ICC will be nerfed to the point where it is doable in blues by then?

I wonder, but it will be interesting to try. I'd think about it, but there's no way I'm going to level a character by the time you want to start, and I can't transfer anybody from my US accounts.

You could try to match up US people with RAF, but that still only gets you to lvl 60. 60-80 is a good 60 hours of play time that I just can't see getting to 80 with blue gear in less than a couple months, given that I'm big on the casual schedule (the reason my current mains are non-raiding atm)

Actually so interesting that I might just go away from my main to start this.

My main is Zoîdberg on the EU server Ahn'Qiraj, and I was wondering, if I where to start a new alt on Arathor, what are the chances that you actually will "answer" for the newbie to enter this...competition? (Is what I would like to call it)

Just to say, I'm interested in dropping my main for this, as I want to see a "real" challenge. Being a endgame raider isn't what it used to be, but with this, it actually sounds interseting to go in a raid, knowing that no one will speak up on Vent if you are moving into a fire. You are on your own and you must only do your very best from your own understanding of the fight.Isn't that how it is, or am I missing a point?

I am amused by the handful of people giving you "data" and "hard facts" that are pulled entirely out of their ass. The things like "you can't do icc without 5k dps" or "tanks with 50k health are nearly 2 shot".

To the people doing that, I say, "shut up, you're one of the bads Gevlon is going to be laughing at."

My whole raiding career has been with undergeared people and people who don't know how to raid. I'm guilty of boosting them in a way, but they're my good friends and we enjoy hanging out together. We've cleared all available content on normal mode (and some hard mode ulduar), but it wasn't without a lot of struggle. Tanks with 50k health nearly 2 shot on icc10? Well, suck on this, idiots: we did it with a tank who wasn't breaking 40k health and we only had 1 dps above 5k, the others were all at 2.5-4k. So, yeah, take your stats, take your "facts", and go elsewhere.

If you have any interest in setting up a U.S. Version make a post on the thread I started. Sounds fun, can't let the Euro's get all the enjoyment, although you'll have to work smarter without Gevlon bankrolling us.

I'd have loved giving it a try (and receiving the starter pack for levelling a new char).

My guess on the outcome : - some original rotations figured out. - some original usage of side-effects from talents

I'm just wondering about "picking a new class". What for? Proving that it is accessible to idiots (=unfamiliar)? Then i guess this hypothesis is wrong since only seasoned players, familiar with the game mechanics, will be able to make the most out of their new reroll.

Well, i can see it happen.Normal guild has 5-6 death players at the middle of the fight if not earlier,so if they are somewhat competent and you have only 1-2 death ones you suddenly dont need good gear to make up for the lack of dps due death bodies.